Marblehead native a champion of Fifth Amendment

Thursday

Aug 28, 2014 at 6:51 AMAug 28, 2014 at 6:51 AM

By William J. Dowdwdowd@wickedlcoal.com

A Marblehead native who is working ensure all people get the legal representation to which they are entitled stopped by the Rotary Club of Marblehead Harbor’s meeting Tuesday, Aug. 12 to discuss some of her office’s challenges and successes Tuesday morning, Aug. 12.Rotarian Joe Dever, former first justice of Lynn District Court, introduced Nancy Bennett, the deputy chief counsel of the Private Counsel Division of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services.“She is doing what I consider to be God’s work,” said Dever of Bennett, a Yale Law School graduate and former Harvard professor.The Massachusetts Legislature created the committee, which is under the state judicial branch’s auspices, “to oversee the provision of legal representation to indigent persons who have a right to counsel in criminal and civil cases and administrative proceedings.”As one of its deputy chief attorneys, Bennett oversees five areas in the committee’s Private Counsel Division, from criminal trials and appeals to cases involving juvenile delinquency and youthful offenders.Dever praised highly another aspect of Bennett’s work: overseeing bar advocate programs, in which private attorneys, many of the them fresh out of law school, are trained to work with the poor..“In a brief amount of time, they know everything,” he said.He added public defenders like Bennett are, in his opinion, the “heart and soul of due process,” the right guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.In Bennett’s 20-minute talk, she touched on wide range of topics, from the committee’s advocacy of decriminalizing certain minor offenses or eliminating mandatory jail time for certain offenses, which she said is a burden to the system.She offered statistics on Essex County’s public defenders and discussed certain misperceptions people have about public defenders.“A lot of people think the public defenders’ office just represents people who are charged with serious crimes that they read about in newspapers,” she began. “Defenders spend time representing much more ordinary people whom you might know or encounter.”Bennett said about 500 staff attorneys, working in defense offices located across Massachusetts, provide representation to clients who are “vulnerable to government action” in superior, district, juvenile, probate and family court cases and in appeals of those cases.“The defenders’ office doesn’t just try to handle the courtroom, but really tries to find out what’s going on in a client’s life and how we can help them,” she explained, citing the story of a 14-year old boy who faced charges for bringing marijuana to school, which were ultimately dropped once he was able to get effective representation.Because the boy’s public defender was willing to dig deeper into his life, it was discovered that his issues with getting into trouble at school stemmed from an undiagnosed learning issue, something the lawyer was able to discuss with the school district’s superintendent. Once he was properly diagnosed and placed in special education classes, he began to flourish in school.“We try to provide good lawyers but also social work or expertise on law when needed,” she said.The committee advocates reforms aimed at lowering the cost of administering justice, she explained. There certain low-level misdemeanors and offenses, such as interrupting a school assembly, smoking on a bus or not registering a car, for which she said virtually no one is ever sent to jail, yet because such a sentence is on the books, a right to counsel is triggered.“We have a tendency to add a potential jail sentence to many kinds of conduct that we want to discourage in society,” Bennett said.About $40 million in legal fees is spent on these low-level cases every year, Bennett said.“We could really save a lot of money if we reclassified some of the offenses that trigger public defense — your tax dollars,” she said.These low-level offenses should be converted to civil-infraction status, she argued. Sentencing reform is on the committee’s advocacy docket, too.“The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other county,” she said. “We need alternative ways to help people become successful members of our community.”The average cost per year to keep someone in jail is $40,000, she said.Massachusetts public defenders, comprised of 500 state employees and 3,000 private attorneys, take on nearly 220,000 cases annually. In Essex County alone, 300 private attorneys handled 17,000 cases at a $53 hourly rate. The average case cost $550.“You’re getting a good bargain,” Bennett said. “I challenge you to find a lawyer who will represent you for $53 an hour.”